How I Wrote This

Does the content of a news article influence the effectiveness of ads placed within it? In this episode, JMR Co-Editor Brett Gordon discusses the recently published paper, “Attention Spillovers from News to Ads: Evidence from an Eye-Tracking Experiment,” with authors Andrewy Simonov (Columbia Business School),Tommaso Valletti, and Andre Veiga (both from Imperial College Business School). The idea for the paper was born in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the researchers learned that some advertisers were using “block lists” to prevent their ads from appearing on publishers' websites with pandemic-related news content. Did the advertisers have a point? Or, they wondered, might this be based on a misunderstanding of how we, the audience, actually engage with content and the ads that appear alongside it?

We all likely know that there’s valuable data in our social media posts, but just how can this be used? In this episode, JMR Co-Editor Karen Winterich talks with Verena Schoenmueller and Simon Blanchard about their paper, “Who Shares Fake News? Uncovering Insights from Social Media Users’ Post Histories,” co-authored with Gita Johar. What started out as a collaboration to understand the spread of misinformation led them to uncover the value of social media post histories. While user post history can indeed be useful in predicting fake news sharers, it likely holds much more insight for which this paper’s multi-method approach may serve as a foundation. 

Every business knows that customers who spend more in the past usually spend more in the future. But what if there are some products for which the opposite is true? That is, seeing a customer buy one of these categories means they are less–not more–likely to return to you. JMR Co-editor Brett Gordon speaks with Ayelet Israeli (HBS) and Eric Anderson (Kellogg) to learn about “canary categories,” as in “canary in a coalmine,” which predict exactly this type of behavior. Tune in to learn more about how the authors navigated a complex revision journey.

Ever wonder if those papers with 1000’s of citations are easy to publish? In this episode, JMR Co-Editor Karen Winterich chats with Sankar Sen from Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business to look back at this oldie but well-cited goodie: Does Doing Good Always Lead to Doing Better? Consumer Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility, published in 2001 by Sankar and CB Bhattacharya, before CSR was a hot topic. Then listen in as they discuss how authors can develop research streams and consider future research opportunities regarding corporate social responsibility.

In part to of this special mini episode. Brett and Karen break down the review process and share insights from two current JMR reviewers.

On this special mini episode of How I Wrote This, Karen and Brett take you behind the scenes to hear about what it's really like to be a co-editor for a journal.

JP Dube and Günter Hitsch are professors at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, while Peter Rossi teaches at UCLA Anderson. They delve into their surprising research on switching costs, which defies conventional wisdom by suggesting these costs might actually lower prices in competitive markets. The trio shares insights on their collaborative journey, overcoming research challenges, and the significance of mentorship in academia. Their unique approach and findings challenge long-held beliefs in marketing and economic theory.

Karen learns how Rachel Gershon and Zhenling Jiang merged their behavioral and quantitative skillsets to identify the robust effect of referral contagion. Their findings are published in their paper “Referral Contagion: Downstream Benefits of Customer Referrals” in JMR.

Brett talks to Ankit Sisodia, Alex Burnap and Vineet Kumar about their forthcoming JMR paper “Generative Interpretable Visual Design: Using Disentanglement for Visual Conjoint Analysis.”

On the first episode of Season 2, Karen talks to authors Huachao Gao, He (Michael) Jia, and Bingxuan Guo about their paper “Resources Available for Me Versus Us: Implications for Mitigating Consumer Food Waste.”